'Black phones': postmodern poetics in the Holocaust poetry of Sylvia Plath

Boswell, Matthew ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0041-5583 2008. 'Black phones': postmodern poetics in the Holocaust poetry of Sylvia Plath. Critical Survey 20 (2) , pp. 53-64. 10.3167/cs.2008.200206

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Abstract

Sylvia Plath’s Holocaust poetry and the frequently impassioned critical responses to it illustrate why Sue Vice characterises Holocaust fictions as ‘scandalous’, in the sense that ‘they invariably provoke controversy by inspiring repulsion and acclaim in equal measure’ – the only qualification being that this critical divide was not split particularly evenly when Plath’s best-known Holocaust writing was first published in the mid 1960s. In fact, it took the scales of critical opinion several decades to reach any kind of equilibrium, with the ‘repulsed’ response tending to prevail for the quarter century following its initial publication, but with the critical temper noticeably softening in the 1990s: a shift in critical attitudes that reflects the way that notoriously scandalous texts (here one might include some of Plath’s favourites, such as Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Ulysses) often end up normalising once controversial subject matter.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Journalism, Media and Culture
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0080 Criticism P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History P Language and Literature > PS American literature
Publisher:	Berghahn Journals
ISSN:	0011-1570
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	10 March 2025
Last Modified:	31 Mar 2025 15:15
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/176763

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